Project aims and results: Articulation disorders of unknown origin are one of the most common types of communication disorder diagnosed in children. In the last two decades, these disorders have come to be termed "phonological disorders" (PD) and characterized as a deficit in the misarticulating child's phonological knowledge (or as a delay in the development of such knowledge). Experiments in the previous budget period probed phonological knowledge at three levels of representation: (1) the acoustic-perceptual level, (2) the articulatory level, and (3) an intervening level of inverse mapping functions that co-index acoustic patterns with the articulatory configurations that might reproduce them. Three tasks were used to test these different representational levels in 40 preschool children with PD, a group of children with typical development (TD) matched for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ, and two groups of older participants: 7-8 year olds and adults. Results were interpreted as support for three hypotheses. First, normal language development involves a progressive mastery of phonological knowledge at all three levels that continues well beyond the age when the majority of children with TD can reliably produce all of the phonemes of English. Second, while all three representational levels bootstrap off of phonetic skills that begin to develop in pre-lexical vocal play, their continued development in the young child is closely tied to vocabulary growth. This is especially true of mapping skills at level (3). Performance on the task probing this level of representation shows an effect of phonotactic probability that is inversely correlated with expressive vocabulary size, a pattern that we interpret as evidence of the gradual emergence of symbolic categories such as phonemes. Third, performance of children with PD is similar to that of younger children with TD on the two tasks that measure perception and articulation skills, but there is no difference between children with PD and their TD age peers in the effect that suggests the emergence of phonemes. Thus, PD seems to involve a deficit or delay in one or both of the modality-specific representational levels, rather than in the ability to form symbolic phonological categories. If correct, these hypotheses suggest that therapy for PD should focus on improving skills at the two modality-specific representational levels. However, because all participants in these experiments were monolingual speakers of English, we could not rule out an alternative interpretation of the phonotactic effect in terms of phonetic constraints that make some sound sequences inherently more difficult to hear and to say. This is why we are now focusing on the cross-linguistic comparison of phonotactic effects in the paidologos project.
In 2008, we started a collaboration with Eric Fosler-Lussier and Benjamin Munson on an NSF-supported project to model the social dynamics of motherese in learning vowel postures and other phonetic categories. Papers supported primarily on that project are marked with * before the first author in the list below.
Even more recently, we got NIDCD funds to start working on a longitudinal study of phonological development and its relationship to word learning more generally. See our new encompassing website for further updates on all three projects, as well as any of our publications on these projects from 2012 forward.
Note: Starting in 2012, we've been listing all of our publications on our new web site instead of on this one. You can use these links to jump to our conference presentations and dissertations and theses before 2012.
Syrika, A., Nicolaidis, K., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2011). Acquisition of initial /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences in Greek. Language and Speech, 54(3): 361-386. [pdf of review draft; PMC journal -- in process]
Syrika, A., Kong, E. J., & Edwards, J. (2011). Velar softening: An acoustic study in Modern Greek. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 17-21 August 2011, Hong Kong. [pdf of talk pdf of paper]
Kong, E. J., & Edwards, J. (2011). Individual differences in speech perception: Evidence from visual analogue scaling and eye-tracking. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 17-21 August 2011, Hong Kong.
Beckman, M. E., Munson, B., & Edwards, J. (2011). Methodological issues in the analysis of phonotactic probability effects in nonwords. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 17-21 August 2011, Hong Kong. [pdf of paper]
Kong, E., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2011). The role of acoustic properties in predicting the mastery patterns of Korean laryngeal contrast. Journal of Phonetics, 39: 196-211. [pdf of review draft]
Li, F., Munson, B., Edwards, J., Yoneyama, K., & Hall, K. (2011). Language specificity in the perception of voiceless sibilant fricatives in Japanese and English: Implications for cross-language differences in speech-sound development. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129(2): 999-1011. [pdf of review draft; PMID: 21361456, PMCID: PMC3070995]
Graf Estes, K., Edwards, J., & Saffran, J. R. (2011). Phonotactic constraints on infant word learning. Infancy, 16(2): 180-197. [pdf; PMID: 21297877]
Okalidou, A., Syrika, A., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2011). Adapting a receptive vocabulary test for preschool-aged Greek-speaking children. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 46(1): 95-107. [pdf of review draft; PMID: 21281411]
Edwards, J., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. (2011). Lexicon-phonology relationships and the dynamics of early language development -- a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's 'Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children'. Journal of Child Language, 38(1): 35-40. [pdf; PMID: 20950502]
Monnin, J., & Loevenbruck, H. (2010). Language-specific influence on phoneme development: French and Drehu data. InterSpeech 2010, pp. 1882-1885. [pdf]
* Holliday, J. J., Beckman, M. E., & Mays, C. (2010). Did you say susi or shushi? Measuring the emergence of robust fricative contrasts in English- and Japanese-acquiring children. InterSpeech 2010, pp. 1886-1889. [pdf]
* Plummer, A. R., Beckman, M. E., Belkin, M., Fosler-Lussier, E., & Munson, B. (2010). Learning speaker normalization using semisupervised manifold alignment. InterSpeech 2010, pp. 2918-2921. [pdf]
Monnin, J., & Loevenbruck, H. (2010). Spécificités de l'acquisition des consonnes en français et en drehu: Influence de la langue ambiante. XXVIIéme journées d'étude sur la parole. [pdf]
Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, Jan (2010). Generalizing over lexicons to predict consonant mastery. Laboratory Phonology, 1(2): 319-343. [pdf; PMID: 21113388; PMCID: PMC2990950]
Munson, B., Edwards, J., Schellinger, S., Beckman, M. E., & Meyer, M. (2010). Deconstructing phonetic transcription: Language-specificity, covert contrast, perceptual bias, and an extraterrestrial view of vox humana. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 24: 245-260. [pdf; PMCID: 2941432]
Arbisi-Kelm, T. (2010).
Intonation structure and disfluency detection in stuttering.
In Cécile Fougeron, Barbara Kühnert, Mariapaola D'Imperio,
& Nathalie Valée, eds.,
Laboratory Phonology 10, pp. 405-432, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[pdf of review draft]
Also, paper presented at LabPhon10,
29 June - 1 July 2005, Paris.
* Heintz, I., Beckman, M. E., Fosler-Lussier, Eric, & Ménard, L. (2009). Evaluating parameters for mapping adult vowels to imitative babbling. InterSpeech 2009, pp. 688-691. [pdf]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). Prosodic structure and consonant development across languages. In M. Vigário, S. Frota, M. J. Freitas (eds.) Interactions in phonetics and phonology, pp. 109-136. John Benjamins. [pdf of review draft]
Li, F., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). Contrast and covert contrast: The phonetic development of voiceless sibilant fricatives in English and Japanese toddlers. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1): 111-124. [pdf of review draft; PMCID 2723813]
Edwards, J. & Munson, B. (2008). Bases: Perception and production. In R. Schwartz, ed., Handbook of Child Language Disorders, pp. 216-231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [pdf of ms]
Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2008). Methodological questions in studying phonological acquisition. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 22(12): 939-958. [pdf of proofs; PMCID 2728799]
Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2008). Some cross-linguistic evidence for modulation of implicational universals by language-specific frequency effects in the acquisition of consonant phonemes. Language Learning & Development, 4(2): 122-156. [pdf of review draft; PCMID 2728799]
Kong, E., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2007). Fine-grained phonetics and acquisition of Greek voiced stops. Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, BeckmanMunsonEdwardsICPhS2011. [pdf of paper]
Li, F., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). Spectral measures for sibilant fricatives of English, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbruecken. [pdf of paper]
Monnin, J., Loevenbruck, H., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). The influence of frequency on word-initial obstruent acquisition in Hexagonal French. Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 6-10 August 2007, Saarbruecken. [pdf of review draft]
Beckman, M. E., Munson, B., & Edwards, J. (2007).
Vocabulary growth and developmental expansion of types of
phonological knowledge.
In Jennifer Cole and José I. Hualde, eds.,
Laboratory Phonology 9,
pp. 241-264, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[slides of talk]
Also, paper presented at LabPhon9, 24-26 June 2004, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign.
[pdf of review draft]
Munson, B. (2006). Nonword repetition and levels of abstraction in phonological knowledge. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(4), 577-581.
Ellis Weismer, S., & Edwards, J. (2006). The role of phonological storage deficits in specific language impairment: A reconsideration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(4), 556-562.
Munson, B., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2005). Phonological knowledge in typical and atypical speech sound development. Topics in Language Disorders, 25, 190-206. [preprint of paper; PMCID 2832188]
Munson, B., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2005). Relationships between nonword repetition accuracy and other measures of linguistic development in children with phonological disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 61-78. [preprint; PMCID 15938060]
Thomas-Tate, S., Washington, J., & Edwards, J. (2004). Standardized assessment of phonological awareness skills in low-income African American first graders. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 13, 182-190.
Edwards, J., Beckman, M. E., & Munson, B. R. (2004). The interaction between vocabulary size and phonotactic probability effects on children's production accuracy and fluency in nonword repetition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 421-436.
Nicolaidis, K., Edwards, J., Beckman, M., & Tserdanelis, G. (2003). Acquisition of lingual obstruents in Greek. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Greek Linguistics, Rethymno, Crete, September 18-21, 2003. [preprint]
Beckman, M. E. (2003). Input representations (inside the mind and out). In G. Garding & M. Tsujimura (eds.) WCFFL22 Proceedings (pp. 70-94). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. [preprint]
Beckman, M. E., Yoneyama, K., & Edwards, J. (2003). Language-specific and language-universal aspects of lingual obstruent productions in Japanese-acquiring children. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan, 7, 18-28. [preprint]
Edwards, J., Fox, R. A., & Rogers, C. (2002). Final consonant discrimination in children: Effects of phonological disorder, vocabulary size, and articulatory accuracy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 231-242.
Munson, B. (2001). A method for studying variability in fricatives using dynamic measures of spectral mean. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 1203-1206.
Munson, B. (2001). Phonological pattern frequency and speech production in adults and children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 778-792.
Munson, B. (2001). Relationships between vocabulary size and spoken word recognition in children aged 3 to 7. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, 28, 20-29.
Beckman, M.E., & Edwards, J. (2000). The ontogeny of phonological categories and the primacy of lexical learning in linguistic development. Child Development, 71, 240-249.
Edwards, J. (2000). Commentary: Lexical representations in acquisition. Papers in laboratory phonology V (M. Broe & J. Pierrehumbert, eds). Cambridge University Press, 240-249.
Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2000). Lexical frequency effects on young children's imitative productions. Papers in laboratory phonology V (M. Broe & J. Pierrehumbert, eds). Cambridge University Press, 208-218.
Edwards, J., Fourakis, M., Beckman, M. E., and Fox, R. (1999). Characterizing knowledge deficits in phonological disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42, 169-186.
Edwards, J., Gibbon, F., & Fourakis, M. (1997). On discrete changes in the acquisition of the alveolar/velar stop consonant contrast. Language and Speech, 40, 203-210.
Monnin, J., Loevenbruck, H., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2011). Vowel context and frequency effects in dorsal and coronal acquisition in Drehu and French. Poster presented at the 9th International Seminar on Speech Production, Montreal, 20-23 June. [pdf of poster]
Chung, H., Kong, E. J., Edwards, J., & Weismer, G. (2011). A cross-linguistic developmental study of vowel spectral movement patterns. Poster presented at the 161th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Seattle, WA, 23-27 May.
Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J., & Munson, B. (2011). Developing acoustic measures to evaluate the emergence of phonological contrast. Paper presented at the 161th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Seattle, WA, 23-27 May. [pdf of slides]
Kong, E. J., & Edwards, J. (2011). Gradient perception of laryngeal contrast of stops in English and Korean: Eye-tracking evidence. Poster presented at the 161th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Seattle, WA, 23-27 May. [pdf]
Li, F., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2011). Similarities and differences in the development of sounds "s" and "sh" in English and Japanese. Poster presented at the 2011 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Montreal, 31 March - 2 April.
* Munson, B., Ménard, L., Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J., & Chung, H. (2010). Sensorimotor maps and vowel development in English, Greek, and Korean: A cross-linguistic perceptual categorization study. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
Chung, H., Edwards, J., Weismer, G., Kong, E., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. (2010). Korean listeners' sensitivity to language-specific phonetic details of children and adults' vowel production in five different languages. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
Syrika, A., Edwards, J., Fourakis, M., Kong, E. J., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. (2010). Why [spa] not [psa]? On the perceptual salience of initial /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
Todd, A. E., Edwards, J., Litofsky, R. Y., & Li, F. (2010). Production of sibilant fricatives by children with cochlear implants. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
* Julien, H. M., Munson, B., Edwards, J., Beckman, M. E., & Holliday, J. J. (2010). Modifying speech to children based on perceived developmental level: An acoustic study of adults' fricatives. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
Kong, E., Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2010). Why are Korean tense stops mastered early? Evidence from production and perception. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April. [pdf]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., Edwards, J., Munson, B., & Kong, E. (2010). Cross-linguistic perception of velar and alveolar obstruents: A perceptual and psychoacoustic study. Poster presented at the 159th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Baltimore, MD, 19-23 April.
Syrika, A., Li, F., Kong, E-J., Edwards, J., Beckman, M.E., & Munson, B. (2009). Coarticulation of /s/ with following or preceding stops in Greek consonant sequences. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, University of Chicago, 29-31 October 2009. [pdf of slides]
Syrika, A., Li, F., Kong, E-J., Edwards, J., Beckman, M.E., & Munson, B. (2009). Transitional cues in fricative noise in Greek /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences: children vs. adults. Poster presented at the 158th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, San Antonio, TX, 26-30 October. [pdf of poster]
Sweet, E. A., Edwards, J., Litovsky, R. Y., Zettler, C. M., Beckman, M. E., & Arbisi-Kelm, T. R. (2009). Nonword repetition accuracy of children with bilateral cochlear implants: Effects of age and vocabulary size. Poster presented at the 2009 Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses, Tahoe City, CA, 12-17 July 2009.
Todd, A., Edwards, J., Litovsky, R., Li, F., Zettler, C., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). Acoustic characteristics of sibilant fricatives in children with cochlear implants. Poster presented at the 2009 Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses, Tahoe City, CA, 12-17 July 2009. [pdf of poster]
Sweet, E., Edwards, J., Litovsky, R., Zettler, C., Beckman, M. E., & Arbisi-Kelm, T. (2009). Nonword repetition accuracy of children with bilateral cochlear implants. Poster presented at the 30th Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, 4-6 June 2009.
Todd, A., Edwards, J., Litovsky, R., Li, F., Zettler, C., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). Analysis of "s" and "sh" in children with cochlear implants. Poster presented at the 30th Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, 4-6 June 2009. [pdf of poster]
Schellinger, S., Meyer, M. K., Munson, B., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). The role of listener expectations on judgments of children's /s/ productions, revisited. Poster presented at the 30th Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, 4-6 June 2009. [pdf of poster]
* Kaiser, E., Munson, B., Li, F., Holliday, J., Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J., & Schellinger, S. (2009). Why do adults vary in how categorically they rate the accuracy of children's speech? Poster presented at the 157th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 18-22 May 2008. [pdf of poster]
Li, F., Mays, C., Skorniakova, O., Beckman, M. E. (2009). Gendered production of sibilants in the Songyuan dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Poster presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, 8-11 January 2009.
Kong, E-J., Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J. (2009). VOT is necessary but not sufficient for describing the voicing contrast in Japanese. Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, 8-11 January 2009. [ppt]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., Beckman, M. E., Kong, E-J., Edwards, J. (2009). Production of dorsal place(s) of articulation by child and adult speakers of four languages. Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco, 8-11 January 2009.
* Urberg Carlson, K., Kaiser, E., & Munson, B. (2008). (Assessment of phonetics skills in children 2:) Testing gradient measures of children's productions. Paper presented at the 2008 ASHA Convention, Chicago, 20-22 November 2008. [pdf of poster]
Schellinger, S., Edwards, J., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. (2008). Assessment of phonetic skills in children 1: Transcription categories and listener expectations. Paper presented at the 2008 ASHA Convention, Chicago, 20-22 November 2008. [pdf of poster]
Syrika, A., Edwards, J., Li, F., & Beckman, M. E. (2008). Covert contrast in the acquisition of stop-/s/ sequences in Greek. Paper presented at the 2008 ASHA Convention, Chicago, 20-22 November 2008. [pdf of poster]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., Beckman, M. E., Kong, E-J., & Edwards, J. (2008). Psychoacoustic measures of stop production in Cantonese, Greek, English, Japanese, and Korean. Paper presented at the 156th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Miami, 10-14 November 2008. [pdf of poster]
Chung, H., Edwards, J., & Weismer, G. (2008). Cross-linguistic acquisition of vowels: English, Korean, Greek, and Cantonese. Paper presented at the 156th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Miami, 10-14 November 2008. [This paper was also selected for publication in a lay language version as "A vowel by the same name is not necessarily the same: Kids mimic adults vowels" on the ASA World Wide Press Room.]
Mays, C. (2008). An acoustic study of affricates in the Songyuan dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Poster presented at the 22nd Annual CIC SROP Research Conference, Michigan State University, 24-26 July 2008. [pdf of poster]
Li, F., Kong, E-J., Beckman, M., & Edwards, J. (2008). Adult acoustics and developmental patterns for gender-marked phonetic variants in Mandarin fricatives and Japanese stops. Poster presented at LabPhon11, 30 June - 2 July 2008, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. [pdf of poster]
Schellinger, S. K., Edwards, J., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. The role of listener expectations on judgments of children's /s/ productions. Poster presented at the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, 5-7 June 2008, University of Wisconsin -- Madison. [pdf of poster]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., & Beckman, M. E. (2008). Cross-linguistic prosodic differences and their effects on the interpretation of error patterns in child speech. Paper presented at the Child Phonology Conference, 2-3 June 2008, Purdue University. [pdf of poster]
Chung, H., Edwards, J., & Weismer, G. (2008). Cross-linguistic acquisition of vowels: English, Korean, Greek, and Cantonese. Poster presented at the Child Phonology Conference, 2-3 June 2008, Purdue University. [pdf of poster]
Syrika, A., Edwards, J., Li, F., & Beckman, M. E. Covert contrast in the acquisition of stop-/s/ sequences in Greek. Poster presented at the Child Phonology Conference, 2-3 June 2008, Purdue University. [pdf of poster]
Schellinger, S. K., Edwards, J., Munson, B., & Beckman, M. E. Does "close" count in transcription as well as in horseshoes? Poster presented at the Child Phonology Conference, 2-3 June 2008, Purdue University. [pdf of poster]
Munson, B., Li, F. (presenting author), Yoneyama, K., Hall, K. C., Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J., & Sunawatari, Y. (2008). Sibilant fricatives in English and Japanese: Different in production or perception? Paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. [pdf of slides]
Beckman, M. (2008). Preliminaries to child speech analysis. Plenary paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. [pdf of slides]
Nicolaidis, K., Syrika, A., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). Obstruent production by Greek-speaking children with atypical phonological development. Paper presented at the 14th International Conference of the Greek Applied Linguistics Association: Advances in Research on Language Acquisition and Teaching. Thessaloniki, Greece, 14-16 December 2007. [pdf of slides]
Syrika, A., Nicolaidis, K., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). Acquisition of consonant clusters by Greek-speaking children: The case of initial /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences. Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Greek Lingusitics, University of Ioannina, August 29 - September 2, 2007. [pdf of slides]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., Beckman, M. E., Edwards, J., & Kong, E-J. (2007). Acquisition of stop burst cues in English, Greek, and Japanese. Poster presented at the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI, June 7-9, 2007. [pdf of poster]
Syrika, A., Edwards, J., Nicolaidis, K., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). Acquisition of consonant clusters by Greek-speaking children: Word-initial /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences. Poster presented at the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI, June 7-9, 2007. [pdf of poster]
Kong, E-J., & Beckman, M. E. (2007). The fine-grained phonetics and acquisition of voiced stops in Greek. Paper presented in the 4th Annual OSU Martin Luther King Day Symposium on Linguistics, 15 January 2007. [pdf of slides]
Arbisi-Kelm, T., Edwards, J., Beckman, M., & Kong, E-J. (2007). Acquisition patterns and acoustic cues of voiceless plosives in Greek. Paper presented in the 4th Annual OSU Martin Luther King Day Symposium on Linguistics, 15 January 2007. [pdf of slides]
Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2006). Cross-linguistic investigation of phonological acquisition: Language-specific and language universal influences. Poster presented at the 2006 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, Nov. 16-18, Miami, FL. [pdf of poster]
Li, F., & Edwards, J. (2006). Contrast and covert contrast in the acquisition of /s/ and /S/ in English and Japanese. Poster presented at LabPhon10, 29 June - 1 July, 2006, Paris. [abstract and draft of poster]
Kong, E-J., & Beckman, M. E. (2006). Fine-grained phonetics and developmental universals for glottal features. Poster presented at LabPhon10, 29 June - 1 July, 2006, Paris. [abstract and draft of poster]
Mills, M., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2005). Child-directed speech in African American Vernacular English. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association, 17-20 November 2005, San Diego. [pdf handout]
Slocum, L., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2005). Cross-linguistic acquisition of voiceless lingual fricatives. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association, 17-20 November 2005, San Diego. [pdf handout]
Tserdanelis, G., Beckman, M. E., Kong, E-J., Li, F., & Syrika, A. (2005). Comparing Greek, English and Japanese velar and palatal(iz)ed stops. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, 8-10 September 2005, York, UK. [slides of talk]
* Sovinski, Ryan Mary (2011). Perceptual validation of an acoustic robustness of contrast measure. Masters thesis, Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin -- Madison.
* Skorniakova, Oxana (2010). Sensitivity to sub-phonemic variation: Evidence from a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) goodness-rating task. Masters thesis, Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Syrika, Asimina (2010). Consonant cluster acquisition in Greek: Evidence from transcription, perception, and psychoacoustics. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin -- Madison.
Monnin, Julia (2010). Influence de la langue ambiante sur l'acquisition phonologique: une comparaison du français et du drehu. Doctoral dissertation, School of Ingénierie pour la Santé, la Cognition et l'Environnement, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble I, and Centre des Nouvelles Études pour le Pacifique, Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Mays, Chanelle (2010). Gender differences in English and Japanese "s" versus "sh". B.A. honors thesis. Department of Lingusitics, Ohio State University. [pdf]
* Julien, Hannah M. (2010). Modifying speech to children: An acoustic study of adults' fricatives. M.A. thesis. Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota. [pdf]
* Johnson, Julie M. (2010). The role of clinical experience in listening for covert contrasts in children's speech. M.A. thesis. Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota. [pdf]
* Andrzejewski, Amy (2010). Influence of listener expectations on judgments of stop place of articulation in children's speech. B.A. honors thesis. Department of Communicative Disorders, University of WI-Madison.
* Derksen, Lauren M. (2010). Effects of auditory anchors on perceptual judgment of hypernasality. M.A. thesis. Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota. [pdf]
Sweet, Emilie (2009). Nonword repetition accuracy of children with cochlear implants. M.Sc. thesis. Department of Communicative Disorders, University of WI-Madison.
Todd, Ann, (2009). Production of sibilant fricatives children with cochlear implants: Transcription and acoustic analysis. M.Sc. thesis. Department of Communicative Disorders, University of WI-Madison.
Kong, Eunjong (2009). The development of phonation-type contrasts in plosives: Cross-linguistic perspectives. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Li, Fangfang (2008). The phonetic development of voiceless sibilant fricatives in English, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Greuel, Alison (2008). Phonological awareness of children with hearing impairment: Evidence from looking while listening. B.A. honors thesis. Departments of Communicative Disorders and Psychology, University of WI-Madison.
Schellinger, Sarah K. (2008). The role of intermediate productions and listener expectations on the perception of children's speech. M.Sc. thesis. Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin -- Madison. [pdf file]
Wong, Wai-Yi Peggy (2006). Syllable fusion in Hong Kong Cantonese connected speech. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Tserdanelis, Giorgos (2004). The role of segmental sandhi in the parsing of speech: evidence from Greek. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Mills, Monique T. (2004). Phonological features of African American Vernacular English in child-directed versus adult-directed speech. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University. [pdf file]
Vodopivec, Stacie (2004). The influence of phonotactic probability on consonant acquisition. B.A. honor's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University. [pdf file]
Hoover, S. (2004). The influence of vowel context on consonant acquisition. B.A. honor's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
White, S. D. (2001). Covert contrast, merger and substitution in children's productions of /k/ and /t/. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Isermann, B. C. (2001). Variability and consistency of articulation in children with phonological disorders. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Munson, B. (2000). Phonological pattern frequency and speech production in children and adults. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Peterman, J. C. (2000). Acoustic and articulatory evaluation of two children with phonological disorders. B.A. honor's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Draper, L. (2000). Nonword repetition and vocabulary size in typically developing children. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Bonnot, C. M. (1999). Performance of typically developing children and children with phonological disorders on a nonword repetition task. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Arnett, S. E. (1999). The role of second formant transitions in initial burst consonant recognition. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Koch, C. D. (1999). A comparison of two procedures for phonological assessment. B.A. honor's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Frank, S. A. (1998). The acquisition of the voicing contrast in word-initial alveolar and velar stop consonants: A longitudinal case study of one phonologically disordered child. Master's thesis. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University.
Cross-language transcription categories: We are using Praat and R to manage the speech data that we are recording and the phonetic transcriptions and other analyses that we are making of the speech. We have developed a set of conventions for transcribing the children's utterances using a two-stage process. The first stage is a kind of "broad" or "phonemic" transcription; specifically, a native-speaker transcriber's determination of whether or not the child's production is within the phonetic norms for the target sound in the ambient speech community. This determination is immediately followed by the second stage of "narrow" or "phonetic" transcription, to identify the errored productions in terms of "IPA sound categories" that can be applied uniformly across the languages that we are comparing. That is, the errors are annotated using ASCII symbols based roughly on the IPA to ASCII conventions in WorldBet developed by Jim Hieronymus, along with prefixed tags for distinguishing perceived substitutions of one phoneme by another from errors that take the production outside of the phonetic space for the language. As we develop these categories, we are choosing exemplars of prototypical utterances for each phoneme category in each language as well as the most common types of production error. Eventually, we hope to be able to make a web-based course for training new transcribers using this cache of exemplars, which we will make available to other researchers on phonological acquisition.
PhonBank distribution of real word production data: Yvan Rose and Brian MacWhinney have made CHA-files from the transcriptions for the real word productions by about 80 of the children recruited for each of Cantonese, English, Greek, and Japanese. These CHA-files and the associated audio recordings are now available as a PhonBank database.
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